A Note from UYSA CEO Bryan Attridge on Referee Recruitment and Education Strategy for 2021
UYSA Club Leadership –
We hope all is well with you as we've wrapped up our fall league and are heading into winter. We know that the past 8 months have been trying but we’ve been excited to see our players back on the field.
As you all are aware, the referee program has been and continues to be one of our greatest challenges in the association. We have too few referees, some referees lack necessary training and experience, and many referees are treated with contempt and disrespect. We’ve met with the State Youth Referee Administrator and the State Referee Committee over the past year to put together a plan to recruit more referees, train them better, and hopefully keep them longer. But we need your help. We can’t get to where we need to be with just our office staff and board and committee members pushing to improve the program. We need our membership to buy in and champion this cause as well. We need your help finding and encouraging referees, helping to train them, and ensuring that they are treated with respect.
Below is our list of new Referee Program Improvement Initiatives that we hope will lead to positive change and improvement over the next few years. Please let us know if you have any questions or suggestions.
REFEREE IMPROVEMENT INITIATIVES
Referee Marketing Campaign
Referee Scholarships
Referee Mentoring
Yearly SRC UYSA Club Meetings
Referee Continuing Education/Training Platform
A New Referee Assigning and Payment Platform
U9/U10 Certified Club Linesman Program
Approved AYSO Referee Crossover Program
Referee Marketing Campaign
Our referee marketing campaign will deliver a call for more referees and the benefits of being a referee (pay/flexible schedule), while highlighting different referees and referee families in the state. A series of emails, ads and informational videos will run over the course of the next year on our website, social media channels, and through our email database. Other videos focused on referee treatment and experiences will also be featured over the next year.
Referee Scholarships
In conjunction with Real Salt Lake, we will provide funding to the Referee program that will allow for 400 new referees to receive scholarships each year, covering their initial registration and certification fees. A new referee is defined as anyone that has not been certified in the past 3 years. Certification fees can be a deterrent as many referees don’t receive enough assignments to make that money back over the first year. We hope to remove as many obstacles as possible in recruiting new referees. For any questions about the scholarship process or qualifications please contact Holly Gundred at utahsdo@gmail.com. More information will be released regarding scholarships as new certification classes are scheduled and announced.
Referee Mentoring
In conjunction with Real Salt Lake, we will certify and provide Referee Mentors to help new and inexperienced referees grow and improve. The goal, initially, is to have Mentors assigned to 5% of our state competition league games. We hope eventually that number can grow and that we will see more mentors on games, and new, inexperienced referees receiving on field training and feedback.
Yearly SRC - Club Meetings
We believe that a divide exists between our clubs/coaches/players/parents and the referee association. We want our State Referee Committee to be regularly meeting with our Club Boards, Coaches and Administrators to answer questions about referee certification, training and perspective. We will promote and facilitate yearly meetings between club leadership/coaches and the State Referee Committee.
Referee Continuing Education/Training Platform
UYSA will be purchasing a new platform for the SRC to utilize in which they can provide more regular and effective online continuing education training to their referee pool.
A New Referee Assigning and Payment Platform
We’ve been working closely with Stack Sports (formerly Affinity) to develop and launch a new referee assigning and payment platform. This new platform will make referee assigning more efficient and user friendly and ensure that payment processing and reporting for referees is much improved over our current system.
U9/U10 Certified Club Linesman Program
In the U9 age groups this year and in the U9/U10 age groups next year we are requiring each team to train and certify at least 2 Club Certified Linesman to help the center referee at matches in these age groups. Requiring CCL’s at these age groups will introduce more people to referee program, help to humanize the referee position, improve the experience of the players/fans at these age groups and hopefully lead to more interest in the referee profession.
An approved and simple crossover pathway for AYSO referees to be eligible to referee UYSA games
To better utilize current, experienced referees, we’ve met and worked with representatives from AYSO, to be able to more easily tap into their referee pool. An approved cross over has been implemented by the State Referee Committee where an AYSO certified referee can be approved to do UYSA matches. AYSO referees will be required to pay $20 to US Soccer and if over 18 pay for a background check, then take an online course to familiarize them with UYSA rules and up to date SRC instruction. For more information on this process please contact Holly Gundred at utahsdo@gmail.com or Charles Hanosek at utahsdi@gmail.com. Thankfully, AYSO United will help us advertise this process and approval throughout their AYSO ranks in our regions.
As stated above, we hope that our association will buy into these initiatives and help us improve the overall experience for our referees and in turn our players, coaches, teams, and spectators. If you have any questions about these initiatives, would like to volunteer or help the cause, or have additional ideas on improving the program please reach out and let us know.
Bryan Attridge, UYSA CEO
Brian Smith, UYSA President
